GILROY
– A team of young problem-solvers engineered a victory for their
design skills during the 2004 Tech Challenge Saturday.
Six students from Brownell Academy Middle School earned a
second-place finish for design and methodology used to build a
vehicle that found, collected and deposited a plastic fish from a
60-gallon tank.
GILROY – A team of young problem-solvers engineered a victory for their design skills during the 2004 Tech Challenge Saturday.
Six students from Brownell Academy Middle School earned a second-place finish for design and methodology used to build a vehicle that found, collected and deposited a plastic fish from a 60-gallon tank. The students were judged on a presentation of the team’s strategy and design process at the Tech Museum of Innovation.
The PacMen, as the team was named, spent more than 200 hours preparing for the event.
“We worked together as a team,” said Mallory Watkins, on why the PacMen’s methodology earned kudos. “Our journal was really organized and we had all our meeting logs written down.”
The Tech Challenge, in its 17th year, presents students with problems rooted in real-world scenarios.
This year, students were asked to help control the population of northern pike in Lake Davis, which are causing a decline in the population of other species of fish. They created a device to extract the non-native species.
The PacMen – including AJ Habing, Arthur Lee, Graydon Carr-Ramos, Kaitlin Joven and Rachel Tenney – created a vehicle that drove down a ramp into the water and then used paddle wheels to reach the free-floating, partially submerged fish, pick it up and carry it back. The vehicle completed the task, but the three-minute time limit was difficult to beat.
“They caught the fish, but they didn’t have enough time to bring it back,” said Kim Watkins, who advised the team of Brownell eighth-graders.
The PacMen said they added something to their vehicle at the last minute that changed its buoyancy and slowed it down. It was the first time the Tech Challenge task involved water.
A team of local high school students also had trouble beating the clock, Kim Watkins said.
The team from Gilroy High School and Monte Vista Christian included Tommy Brown, Nathan Goldsmith, Daniel Goldsmith, Stephanie Lauber, Julia Sanchez and Tyler Watkins.
“It was a huge event, I was surprised there were so many teams there,” Kim Watkins said.
There were more than 200 teams from Bay Area schools competing in this year’s Tech Challenge.
There are 16 different award categories, which make it clear that the Tech Challenge is no ordinary engineering competition.
Among the honors up for grabs were “Best Looking Device” and “Most Spectacular Failure.”
There were many real-world applications to the Challenge, Kim Watkins said, from maintaining a budget to designing the vehicle to testing it both at home and at the museum.
“We each had our individual little jobs that we had to do, but we all helped out each other,” said Lee, who helped build and design the vehicle.
